Don't go to work.

Or at least, don’t go to work the way you used to.

I don’t mean your mode of transportation, and I don’t mean the debate between working from home and going to an office—though both are interesting topics in their own right. And yes, remote work has been a recurring discussion over the last couple of weeks.

Instead, let’s assume you do have a good reason to physically go to “work.”
A reason like engaging with other people in a way that uses all your senses—something no screen-bound interaction can fully replicate.

Now let’s add another assumption: technological advancement will eventually replace the familiar trio of screen, mouse, and keyboard (even if I personally still enjoy typing on a keyboard).

Voice will matter more. Augmented reality will matter more.

We might interact with systems through gestures, through spoken dialogue, or through intelligent surfaces—perhaps even entire walls—capable of responding, displaying, and co-creating.

If we follow this trajectory, we can trace it back to a simple origin.
The table and chair became central to work when we began writing information on paper. Paper records turned into electronic records, and the book and ink pen evolved into keyboard, mouse, and screen.

But if we move toward voice- and vision-based interaction, those tools become unnecessary.
We’ll simply tell our programs what to do.
If you’ve used any AI coding assistants in late 2025, you can already imagine layering voice on top and arriving at a fundamentally different way of programming. These tools remember context, history, and documents. They can genuinely act as assistants—assistants you learn to manage, yes, but assistants nonetheless.

So if we no longer need desks because there is nothing to type on, the question becomes: what does the workspace of the future look like?
Where do we go to work?

To explore that, we should revisit why we physically go to work at all—assuming our job does not involve shaping the physical world with our bodies (think of a blacksmith).

Here are some reasons that come to mind:

to engage with people in order to learn or teach
to resolve conflicts
to create shared visions of the future
simply because we are social beings
to focus on a particular topic
to not feel alone

Once we remove the requirement that every workspace must host a keyboard, mouse, and screen, new possibilities emerge.

Maybe offices will become more like boutique hotels—like one I once stayed in in Lisbon, where you could choose where in the house to have breakfast depending on your mood and your desired level of interaction.

Workplaces could offer the same flexibility:
different rooms designed for different states of mind.

These “work rooms” might be equipped with audio and visual systems for interacting with AI assistants relevant to what you’re doing—even if all you need is a summary of a discussion. And I would absolutely include a large, unmistakable physical power switch so you can have truly private conversations that aren’t fed into any system.

If you look at modern office concepts, they already move in this direction.
But today’s technology still anchors us to the ancient tools of the trade.

That won’t last.
Soon, the tools will change—and the spaces will follow.